ONE PIECE: Larry Welo

Much of the artwork in our SEVEN PRINTMAKERS exhibit has a narrative feel, Larry Welo's work is no exception to that. As always though, we wanted to know more, so we asked him to give us all the details on one of his pieces from the show. Enjoy!

A long time ago, I lived in South Minneapolis. At one end of my street was the Crosstown Freeway and the airport. At the other end of the street was Lake Nokomis. During the warmer months, in the evening, my family and I would walk up 27th Avenue to the lake where there was a small coffee shop that had ice cream. My studio, at the time, was in our home so I would frequent the neighborhood, sketching, and putting together ideas for my etchings. I loved the evening walks up the street, witnessing the transition from day to night, with the sky still bright and the street lights and porch lights gradually coming on.

"Dream House", was one of the places we walked past on those magical evenings from a different time. I created the etching a number of years later from the perspective of living in rural Wisconsin. I used a line drawing from the Minneapolis neighborhood as my source material. The colors and values and mood are taken from my imagination. I worked on the four plate color etching over a span of three years, using three primary ink colors and black. This gave me a wide range of color possibilities when printing the piece. I print the etchings on Gampi Sukiawase, a fine hand made printmaking paper imported by Paper Connection in Rhode Island.